


Best Left Unscrambled

by octopus_fool



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Animals, Childhood, Cute, Fluff, Gen, Khazâd November
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12794781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopus_fool/pseuds/octopus_fool
Summary: Kíli decides he has a better use for the duck eggs he found than scrambled eggs.





	Best Left Unscrambled

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 22 of [Khazâd November](https://a-grump-of-dwarves.tumblr.com/post/166304116735/khaz%C3%A2d-november-2017), the additional prompt was "mother".  
> 

Kíli let out a small cry of triumph. There in the reeds in front of him lay a nest of duck eggs. Kíli quickly counted. Six, eight, ten, twelve eggs! They would get to eat Uncle Thorin’s famous scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow! 

Carefully, Kíli gathered ten of the eggs into his leather pouch. Amad always insisted they left two eggs where they were. Kíli wondered why. Maybe he would ask her or Mister Dwalin tonight. Perhaps it would be an interesting story, like the one about the gem that spoke to Durin’s son and taught him how to win great fame in battle. 

He wanted to skip back to the camp, but he was afraid he would break some of the eggs and he didn’t want a mess in his pouch or on his clothes. So instead, Kíli set off at a pace that was somewhere between a run and a walk. It didn’t take him long to reach the camp. 

“Amad! Amad! Look what I found!”

Mister Dwalin got there first. “What is it, Kíli?”

“Eggs! I found duck eggs!”

A wide smile spread over Mister Dwalin’s face. “Oh, good, we’ll have scrambled eggs tomorrow.”

Kíli grinned back at him, proud to have been of use and very much looking forward to breakfast.

Kíli’s Amad crawled out of the tent she was sharing with Kíli and Fíli.

“Amad! I found duck eggs!”

Amad stroked Kíli’s hair. “I heard you already. Well done. Did you leave two eggs in the nest like I told you to?”

“Yes,” Kíli said, carefully handing her the eggs from his little pouch. 

“Good, I knew you’d remember.”

Kíli chewed his lip. “Amad, why do we have to leave two eggs in the nest? We could have even more scrambled eggs if we didn’t.”

“Yes, we could, but if we take too many eggs, there won’t be enough ducks to lay eggs next year. And the mother duck would be sad if she didn’t have any ducklings.”

“Oh.” Kíli was suddenly looking forward to breakfast a lot less.

 

Kíli was rather quiet during dinner, chewing on his bread and dried meat without much enthusiasm. Occasionally, he glanced over at the box in which Amad had placed the eggs, wondering what he could do. 

“Is everything alright, Kíli?” Amad asked, placing a hand on his forehead. “You’re so quiet. I hope you’re not coming down with something. At least you don’t seem to be running a fever.”

“I’m fine,” Kíli said. 

 

By the time he was sent to bed, Kíli had come up with a plan. Now came the hard part: he had to stay awake until everyone else went to bed and fell asleep. 

Kíli was lucky. It didn’t take long until Amad, Uncle Thorin and Mister Dwalin extinguished the remains of the fire with a loud hiss and went to bed. Kíli’s Amad fell asleep almost immediately and Mister Dwalin’s rumbling snores joined in soon after. Uncle Thorin took longer to fall asleep. Kíli could hear him tossing and turning in his tent. Kíli was just about to drift off despite his plans when a loud, gurgling snore from Uncle Thorin tore him awake again. 

As quietly as he could, Kíli sat up and opened the flap of the tent, clutching his pouch even tighter than he had all evening. He shivered in the cold night air as he tiptoed over to where Uncle Thorin kept the supplies. Quietly, Kíli took the box with the eggs out. He looked at the eggs and gently ran a hand over them. 

“I’ll take good care of you,” he whispered. 

Kíli briefly looked at the box and considered. The eggs would probably break less easily if he left them in the box. Kíli stuffed some dry grass into the box and even more of it into his pouch around the box. Hopefully, the box and the eggs would rattle around less this way.

Rather satisfied with himself, Kíli snuck back into the tent.

Amad stirred and Kíli froze.

“Kíli? What’s wrong?”

“I just needed to water the weeds,” Kíli lied, his heart beating fast.

“Mh. Go back to sleep,” Amad murmured, her head already back on the pillow. 

“I will,” Kíli whispered and lay down, making sure his pouch was under the warm blanket as well.

 

“Where did the eggs go?” Uncle Thorin asked.

Kíli held his breath, hoping nobody would notice the lump under his clothes.

“I put them in the box like I always did,” Amad replied.

“Well, they aren’t here,” Uncle Thorin replied, rummaging through the supplies. “Neither is the box.”

“Let me see,” Mister Dwalin said, looking through the supplies himself. “You’re right. They’re gone.”

“Perhaps the mother duck wanted them back?” Kíli suggested.

The grown-ups looked at him.

“And she took the box with her?” Mister Dwalin asked sceptically. 

“Maybe... maybe they were easier for her to carry that way?” Kíli said, hoping they would finally stop asking difficult questions.

The grown-ups exchanged looks.

“Well, I just want to make sure that mother duck knows that if there’s a mess because the eggs break, she will be the one to clean it, not me,” Amad said sternly.

Kíli nodded eagerly before realising that he really shouldn’t be speaking for mother duck, not if he wanted to keep the eggs a secret. 

“I wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast,” Mister Dwalin complained, sounding rather whinier than Kíli would have expected a great warrior to sound. 

 

Kíli made sure not to skip all day. He did take care to talk a lot though, otherwise his Amad would really start thinking that he was not well. He resisted the urge to look at the eggs constantly, after all, he wanted to keep them a secret. 

And Kíli did a remarkable job at keeping them secret. At least until that evening. 

He was sitting in the tent looking at the eggs to see if any of them had broken, which they luckily hadn’t. Kíli didn’t want to be cleaning up egg gunk. He wondered when they would hatch.

“What do you have there?” Fíli asked, opening the flap of the tent.

“Nothing!”

“You do!”

“Shhh,” Kíli whispered. “Amad can’t know. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Now let me see what you have there.”

Kíli reluctantly showed him the box. 

“What are you doing with those? We could have had scrambled eggs for breakfast, why are you hiding these?”

“They’re not for scrambled eggs! I’m going to take care of them and see the little ducklings come out.”

“Those aren’t going to hatch,” Fíli said.

“They are!”

“Are not.”

“Are too!” Kíli retorted, glaring at Fíli.

Fíli rolled his eyes. “They need to be kept warm to hatch.”

“I did keep them warm,” Kíli said stubbornly, after all he wasn’t stupid and had been keeping them warm all day.

“And they need to be turned regularly. Otherwise the ducklings will stick to the shell,” Fíli said.

“How do you know that?” Kíli asked.

“One of Dwalin’s prisoners once told me that when telling me the story of how he raised a colourful parrot.”

“You’re not supposed to talk to Mister Dwalin’s prisoners,” Kíli pointed out. “I’m going to tell Amad!”

“Then I’ll tell her that you have the eggs.”

Kíli chewed on his lips. “Alright. I won’t tell her.”

“You didn’t turn the eggs though, did you?” Fíli asked.

“I was just going to!”

“Boys, what are you doing there? You know you’re not supposed to fight,” Amad said from outside the tent. 

“We’re not!”

“We’re just talking!”

“That’s good. Dinner is almost ready,” Amad replied.

 

From then on, Kíli made sure to roll the eggs as well as keep them warm and safe. Every evening, he checked to see if any had hatched, but the eggs were always cream white and perfect. Eventually, Kíli started wondering if Fíli was right and the eggs wouldn’t hatch. Still, he kept the eggs warm and turned them regularly. 

 

Just on the evening when Kíli was starting to wonder whether he should return the eggs to Uncle Thorin’s supplies, he saw that there was a small hole in some of the eggs.

“Fíli! Fíli! Come quickly!” In his excitement, Kíli had completely forgotten that the grown-ups were not supposed to find out. Luckily, they did not ask.

“What is it?” Fíli asked as he poked his head into the tent.

“Look!”

“Wow!” Fíli breathed. “They really are hatching!” 

They watched until Uncle Thorin called them for dinner, but the cracks had only widened a little bit by then. 

Kíli could barely sit still during dinner and he could see Fíli fidgeting as well. 

As soon as dinner was over, Kíli stood up. “I’m tired, I’m going to bed. And don’t worry, I’m not getting ill,” he added, seeing his Amad’s look.

“Me too,” Fíli said.

The eggs still weren’t much further. 

 

Kíli thought he would be much too excited to fall asleep when his Amad eventually came to bed as well and told them to finally go to sleep, but he fell asleep almost as soon as his head actually touched the pillow.

When he woke, it took Kíli a moment to realise why he had that excited feeling in his belly. Then he sat upright, glanced over to check that his Amad was still asleep and quickly opened the pouch and the box. He was greeted by a chorus of chirps and a swarm of tiny black and yellow balls of fluff flowing out of the box.

“Hey, stay here!” Kíli whispered, trying to contain them in the box.

He was too slow. Whenever he had put two back into the box, another four had already hopped out.

“Fíli! Wake up!” Kíli shook his brother’s shoulder. “The eggs!”

Fíli sat up sleepily. His eyes widened as the ducklings hopped and waddled over his blankets.

“They hatched! They actually hatched!”

“Yes! I told you they would! Now help me get them back in the box before they wake Amad.”

Fíli carefully caught a duckling and tried to set it back in the box but right at that moment, a duckling hopped onto Amad’s hand and she stirred. 

“Fíli? Kíli? What’s going on?”

She looked at the ball of fluff that had tumbled from her hand when she had moved. Kíli and Fíli froze.

“Oh, they actually hatched!” Amad laughed. “I didn’t think you would actually succeed.”

“You knew?!” Kíli asked, flabbergasted. “How did you know?”

Amad ruffled his hair. “I just had a slight itch, right under my ear, that told me you were trying to hatch those ducklings.”

“Really?” Kíli looked at her with wide eyes.

“How else would I know?” Amad asked, scooping up one of the ducklings to take a closer look. 

“Are you mad at me for not telling you?” Kíli asked.

“I would have forbidden it if I would have minded. But you are going to take care of them yourself, is that clear?”

Kíli nodded eagerly. “Yes, Amad.”

“And you are going to help him,” Amad said to Fíli. “Since my right thumb tells me you knew about this.”

“I will,” Fíli agreed, almost as eagerly as Kíli.

“Good,” Kíli said, “because I need to water the weeds and you have to make sure nothing happens to them.”

Kíli opened the flap of the tent and climbed out, immediately followed by ten tiny balls of fluff.

“Looks like you really are Mother Duck now,” Uncle Thorin said from where he was cooking tea by the fireplace, laughing together with Amad and Mister Dwalin. 

“I still think they would have made excellent scrambled eggs,” Mister Dwalin murmured.

Kíli shot him the darkest look he could give him while ten tiny ducklings tumbled around his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m currently taking Christmas/Yuletide/winter requests/prompts over on Dreamwidth! If you’re interested, read more here: <https://octopus-fool.dreamwidth.org/2017/12/03/>


End file.
